She'll Never Live

by Hunter Morgan

  The girl who had once worn pink acrylic Cinderella slippers for an entire year crossed her arms defiantly over her chest, obscuring the skull and bat graphics of her Marilyn Manson T-shirt. "We weren't doing anything wrong." She jutted out her hip for good measure.

  "No?" Claire leaned over and plucked the beer can Ashley had been trying to hide, off the hardwood floor. "Underage drinking." She sniffed the air. "Smoking a little marijuana, maybe?"

  "It's incense. No one was smoking weed!" Ashley almost shouted the sarcastic words at her mother.

  Claire's hand ached to slap her across her mouth, but she kept it pinned to her side. She saw enough violence on the job to know there was no place for it among family members. No place for violence anywhere. Her gaze shifted to Chain.

  Ashley swore he was sixteen, but he could have been twenty-seven or seven for all Claire knew.

  The black hair and eyebrow piercing threw her off completely. "You been drinking beer in my house, Chain? Smoking a little weed?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "Some guy brought the beer," Ashley said. "I told them I didn't want them drinking here, but they only had a twelve-pack. They're gone, anyway."

  "Only a twelve-pack?" Claire echoed, still eyeing Chain. "What kind of party is that? You want to give me a breathalyzer reading?" she asked the young man who she feared was more intimate with her daughter than she wanted to even consider.

  He hooked his thumbs through the belt loops of his black jeans; the link chain around his waist, usually used to tie out dogs or lock fences, not hold up pants, jangled. Mr. Cool. "Sure, I'll blow for you."

  Claire held the teen's defiant, dark-eyed gaze. If he wanted to play chicken with her, he was going to lose. She'd stare him down all night. "Ash, run out to my car and get me a couple of breathalyzer cartridges and the unit."

  Chain muttered something under his breath and looked away.

  "Mom, you can't make me—"

  Claire glared at her daughter, and Ashley slunk out of the living room.

  "Now, get this crap cleaned up," Claire ordered, indicating the trash. "Then you line up by the door. All of you. I want your names. If you haven't been drinking, or partaking of any other recreational substances, then I'll let you go. But I catch you here again without me being present, and I'll haul all of you into the station."

  Ashley returned to the living room a minute later and handed her mother a zip lock bag of disposable breathalyzer cartridges and the unit. "I can't believe you're doing this," she groaned under her breath. "No one will ever speak to me again."

  "We can hope," Claire quipped with a feigned smile.

  A couple of the girls carried the kitchen garbage can around, picking up trash. The boys were lined up at the door, shoulders hunched, bodies slumped.

  "Come on, April," one with a spike through his eyebrow barked. "Let's go. You're not the Merry Maids."

  One by one, Claire tested the teens. To her surprise, not a single one of them, not even Ashley or Chain, blew an alcohol reading. No one appeared or acted as if they were high, either. So maybe it was the incense she had smelled and not marijuana.

  Who said they could burn that nasty smelling incense in her house, anyway?

  "Okay, you can all go." Claire took down the final name on a pad of paper she carried in her uniform breast pocket, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed that none of the kids here now had been doing anything illegal. "But I'm not kidding. I better not see any of you here again without a personal invitation from me."

  The teens, all dressed as if headed for a bizarre funeral, filed out of the house. Chain was last in line. He lifted one hand to Ashley. She slumped in the doorway between the kitchen and living room and nodded to him, arms still crossed over her chest.

  "I'll call you tomorrow," Ashley said.

  "She'll call you next year when she gets her phone privileges back," Claire hollered. She waved. "Good night."

  "I can't believe you embarrassed me like this," Ashley intoned the minute the front door closed behind her boyfriend.

  "And I can't believe you had a party here while I was working! While I was at a town meeting being torn to bits by people who were supposed to be my friends." Claire balled her fists at her sides. "Someone finds out I'm serving alcohol to teenagers and I'll lose my—"

  "You weren't serving alcohol to teenagers," Ashley said in her nastiest, I hate your guts tone. "Look, I told those boys with the beer to leave and they did. What else do you expect from me?" She threw up her hands and flounced away.

  "Where do you think you're going?" Claire followed her down the hall, hot on her heels.

  "My room."

  "Oh, no you don't. I want you to stand here and let me tell you how many ways this little party of yours could have gone wrong tonight. Alcohol poisoning, drug overdose, pregnancy."

  Ashley halted in front of her bedroom door, but didn't turn around.

  Claire hesitated. "No, on second thought, you better go to your room and hide because I'm so angry with you right now, Ashley, that I could throttle you."

  The teen disappeared into her bedroom, slamming the door soundly behind her.

  Claire closed her eyes and stood there alone in the hall for a moment. She breathed deeply and then went back to the front door to be sure all of Ashley's guests had vacated the premises. The yard was empty except for her tan and green police car and the deep, muddy ruts the kids had put in her wet lawn in their hurry to get away.

  She closed the door, locked the dead bolt, and flipped the front porch light out. There would be no more partying teenagers at her door tonight.

  She went to the kitchen, realizing how naïve she was to think a light out would spurn any kids who had heard there was a party here tonight. Like they were good little trick-or-treaters, checking porch lights. Yeah, right. She'd probably be up half the night turning kids away.

  Claire opened the refrigerator door. She'd eaten nothing today but a bran muffin with coffee sometime around seven this morning. She was famished. Of course there wasn't much in the fridge; she hadn't had time to shop. A bag of coffee beans. Mustard. Ketchup. Plain yogurt. A couple of apples and a carton of orange juice. Some macaroni and cheese that was growing something fuzzy around the edges. Oh... and a can of cheap beer. The boys' twelve-pack must have gone a long way.

  She closed the refrigerator. Even if there had been anything there, she didn't have enough energy to cook it. Microwave popcorn would do.

  She pulled a bag from a box in the cupboard and put it in the microwave. While it popped, she poured herself a glass of orange juice. Maybe the sugar would give her a little energy. She had several folders of papers out in the car that she had to go through tonight. Notes she had taken on the murders and on a couple of men in town she had begun investigating as possible suspects.

  Claire's gut instinct still told her that the killer was one of them. Someone who lived right here in town. A man who worked with the people at that meeting tonight, played with them, maybe even went to church with them. She had no hard evidence for sure. Little circumstantial. But sometimes a cop had to go with her gut.

  She leaned on the counter, listening to the popcorn pop, smelling the buttery aroma. The public meeting tonight had been rough. She knew that people were upset, that they were afraid. But she'd had no idea they were all so angry with her. That they held her responsible.

  Didn't they see she was trying her damnedest to figure out who the killer was? Didn't they realize she was working fifteen hour days and then coming home to lie awake all night in bed and go over and over each detail of each young woman's death in gruesome detail? Didn't they see she was neglecting her teenage daughter? Pawning her off on her grandparents because she worked such long hours and then Claire was too exhausted to deal with a fifteen-year-old?

  She felt tears sting the backs of her lids and she squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the urge to cry. She was the chief of police of this town. She had a job to do. There would be no crying.

  Th
e microwave beeped and she pulled her bag of popcorn out and walked into the living room. As she went by the hall, she glanced in the direction of Ashley's closed door. Her daughter had turned on her stereo just loud enough to annoy Claire, but not loud enough to bring her mother down the hallway screaming to turn it down.

  Typical teenage response to a reprimand.

  But Claire was worried about Ashley. She'd been trying hard to tolerate the whole Goth thing. She kept telling herself that the dyed hair, the clothes, it was all just a phase and it would pass if Claire would ignore it. After all, Ashley had remained a B student throughout the school year and she never missed a day at the greenhouse where she had found a summer job. Claire knew it had to be hard for her, a teenage child of divorce, living in the small town where your mother grew up. Where your mother now filled your grandfather's shoes as chief of police.

  But Ashley was pushing the envelope of maternal tolerance now. She'd been late for curfew a few times. Been caught places in town with Chain when she had said she would be elsewhere. Now this party. Was Ashley headed for serious trouble, and Claire had been too busy on this case to recognize it?

  Her father, Claire's ex, was pushing hard to have Ashley join him in Utah. He had a cute new wife, two cute little girls. Apparently, he thought a cute, blond-haired, blue-eyed teen would round out his new family.

  Wouldn't Ashley look cute in the family photo right now?

  It would almost be worth it to send her to her father's just to see the look on his face when he laid eyes on his darling daughter. The dyed hair. The black eye makeup and silver rings on her fingers embellished with bats and skulls. The disturbingly graphic T-shirts and baggy black jeans.

  Almost.

  The thing was, Claire didn't think, no matter what Tim said, that Ashley would be better off with him. Attending the church school where his wife taught. Having the male role model a young impressionable teenager needed. Ashley belonged here in Albany Beach with her mother. That girl in there right now, lying on her bed with her feet up on the wall, listening to the screeching heavy metal rock, was Claire's life. Dyed black hair, bat rings and all.

  She set her glass of orange juice down on a twig-style end table and went back to the kitchen. Behind a stack of cans of olives in the pantry—a place Ashley would never dare tread—she located a pint of vodka.

  This was definitely a screwdriver kind of night, if ever there was one.

  Back in the living room, she added some vodka to her orange juice. Then an extra splash for good measure. She kicked her shiny black uniform shoes off, removed her sidearm holster and hung the Beretta Cougar over the arm of the couch. Then she sat down to dine.

  Half a bag of popcorn and most of a screwdriver later, Claire heard a car engine and saw the flash of headlights behind the closed drapes in the dining room. She slapped down the bag of popcorn, muttering to herself. A latecomer to the party, no doubt.

  She was tempted to meet him or her at the door with her Beretta subcompact drawn. But that might be overkill. And after the meeting tonight, she didn't need some snotty-nosed teen accusing her of threatening a minor with a deadly weapon.

  Claire unbolted the dead lock and jerked the door open, not bothering to flip on the porch light. "Sorry, man, party's over—"

  "Party's over? I can't believe I missed it, man." Surprised first by the voice, then by the fact that it was an adult male standing on her porch and not a Goth teen, Claire took half a step back. She couldn't identify the voice. What was wrong with her, opening the door to a stranger?

  Chapter 3

  "Claire, it's Graham—Graham Simpson." The man on her step's tone suddenly became serious.

  "Graham." Claire couldn't resist touching her uniform shirt where her heart had nearly leaped from her chest. It was funny how someone who had been a cop as long as she had could still get jumpy. Good old adrenaline, she supposed. "What are you doing standing on my front porch in the dark at eleven o'clock at night?"

  "What are you doing not inviting me to your party?" he teased, trying to lighten the moment. Obviously he realized he'd startled her.

  She couldn't resist a chuckle. The vodka must have relaxed her, at least a little. "Long story. But I still don't know why you're here." She flipped on the porch lamp and he became visible in a circle of pale light.

  Graham Simpson was tall the way Claire liked men. Slender, but not overly so. He didn't look like he was a runner or a gym rat, just a person who kept tabs on the Big Macs. He was clean-cut. He hadn't gone with the longer, shaggier hair a lot of men in their forties were wearing. Sandy brown hair, green or gray eyes. Nice eyes. He was a widower and owned a profitable office supplies store in town. He was also a member of the city council, the same city council that had called tonight's town meeting to "address" its citizens' concerns. That made Graham the enemy right now, if only by association.

  Her guess was that Graham Simpson, like the other council members, had no idea just how concerned its citizens ought to be right now. Especially the blond-haired blue-eyed ones.

  "I wanted to talk to you." He hesitated, looking up, and when he made eye contact, she realized this was more a personal call than she first thought. She wasn't sure how she felt about that. He was a nice guy and all. Maybe a little geeky, but the cool kind of geeky, à la Clark Kent, with contacts. He was smart and seemed well-grounded. She'd have to be blind not to notice how good-looking he was, but of all the problems she didn't need right now, a man was right at the top of the list.

  "They were pretty rough on you tonight," he went on when she didn't respond.

  She shrugged. "I can handle it."

  "I didn't mean to imply you couldn't." He chuckled, raising both hands, palms out as if he were under arrest. "No question in my mind, Chief Drummond can take on this town."

  She studied him suspiciously under the porch light. "And you came all the way out here to tell me this? I mean, I appreciate your support, don't get me wrong. But you could have used the phone."

  "Tried. For more than an hour. Busy. I know you have a teenager. I thought maybe she was surfing the Net or something."

  "We have high speed Internet cable so that won't happen." She glanced over her shoulder into the house. "But I wonder if—" She spotted the cordless telephone on the floor near the TV armoire. "I bet it's off the hook." Annoyed, she turned around, waving Graham in. "Damned kids."

  He followed her inside, closing the door behind him.

  She picked up the phone and sure enough, it was on "talk." One of Ashley's friends must have used it and not hung it up correctly. So apparently Ashley wasn't the only kid in Albany Beach who didn't have her own cell phone.

  Claire turned the phone off and looked up at Graham. He was checking out her bag of popcorn, the near empty glass and the bottle of vodka on the kitchen counter. She felt her cheeks grow warm.

  "Hey," he said, raising both hands in the same gesture she'd seen on the porch. "I can't tell you how many nights I've made a meal of low-fat microwave popcorn and a gin and tonic. No judgment here."

  She couldn't help smiling. How could you not like a guy who could have popcorn and gin for dinner? And she thought that was only a chick thing.

  "Crappy day, huh?" He watched her, giving her his full attention the way someone did when they were truly interested in what the other person had to say.

  "You're not kidding. That meeting, if you can call it that, was just the icing on the cake." She pointed to a leather chair and fell back in her spot on the end of the couch.

  Earlier, when Graham had been seated at the dais in the gym, he had been dressed in a conservative pinstripe gray suit, but he'd removed his tie and jacket and unbuttoned the collar of his oxford. On any other man, she would have thought the white dress shirt looked outdated, but it worked for him.

  She noted with interest that he grasped both pant legs and tugged before sitting down, the way she had seen male characters do in old movies. Old movies were Claire's clandestine passion. She loved old movies
, more accurately, she loved the leading men of old movies: Bogart, Stewart, Tracy. She'd always secretly wanted to be Katharine Hepburn.

  "So you came all the way out here to tell me you felt bad everyone was so mean to me?" she asked, amused. She grabbed a handful of popcorn out of the bag and passed the bag to Graham.

  "Yeah, I guess so. And I've been thinking about the information I've read in the paper and the things I've heard." He took a smaller handful of popcorn than hers and eased it into his mouth, a kernel at a time. "I've got a couple theories and I—"

  Not another one, she thought with an internal groan. "Wait!" she interrupted, needing to hear no more. "I already know what you want. You want me to deputize you and make you part of the force so you can solve the crimes."

  He chuckled. "Not hardly." His brow furrowed. "People actually ask you to deputize them?"

  She took the popcorn bag back. "Oh, yes. I had two men today, who shall go unnamed, come to my office saying they could help me find the killer if I would just give them a real badge. I think they've been watching too many old westerns," she confided with amusement. "They think I need to wrestle up a posse or something." She threw a couple more kernels into her mouth. "Of course, that's not nearly as weird as the calls into our hotline by the woman who believes aliens are coming down from outer space, to Albany Beach, to do experiments on human women and killing them in the process."

  He pointed. "Sounds like a friend of our buddy Ralph's."

  "Could very well be. Of course, they won't be getting much time together to chat about these alien forces. Ralph's still is the county prison, but I think he's going to be extradited."

  Ralph, the dishwasher at the local diner, had actually been a suspect in the murders. Claire had discovered, during her investigation, that he was wanted in New Jersey for the attempted murder of a young woman. Even without a confession, she had raised him to the top of her list as a possible suspect who had killed Patti Lorne, April Provost, Phoebe Matthews and Anne Hopkins. Then college student Kristen Addison had turned up dead, murdered while Ralph sat in the Sussex County Men's Correctional Facility, awaiting extradition. And now she was back to zero suspect again.